The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
"Fiercely and unapologetically progressive, and definitely NSFW. 'The Professional Left' features award-winning bloggers Driftglass and Blue Gal as they skewer right-wing absurdities and dismantle mainstream media mealy-mouths with razor-sharp wit and zero filter. From mercilessly mocking partisan hacks to elevating stories the media ignores, it's the profane, unflinching political commentary you didn't know you needed. More at http://ProLeftPod.com."
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
Ep 335 WHCD, Trump Wins, MorningJoe Takes His Call
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SPEAKER_01This is the podcast for May 6, 2016. It's not safe to work.
SPEAKER_04Recorded live from the never Trump Off-Broadway fundraising production of Waiting for Godot. It's the professional left with Drift Glass and Blue Gal.
SPEAKER_01Hey Drift Glass.
SPEAKER_04Hey Blue Gal.
SPEAKER_01What a week.
SPEAKER_04Kind of boring, yeah. Not much going on. Just sort of picking my toes, wondering what we're gonna do on the weekend. Maybe pancakes. I don't know. Pancakes are always good.
SPEAKER_01It's Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, happy Mother's Day. Including our moms. Yes. Happy moms to every mom day to everyone, all the moms out there, especially ours, who are both awesome.
SPEAKER_01Awesome moms, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And to my wife, who's an awesome mom, too.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you. Thank you. So it mom's day is a wonderful day.
SPEAKER_04This is why I don't fear a Hillary presidency. Because I have been surrounded by smart, strong women my entire life. And it doesn't tr bother me in the slight. In fact, it disturbs me when you know the opposite is true.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04When when dumb is considered and pliable is considered a uh an attribute rather than a defect. But that's just me. What do you want for you know my life, huh?
SPEAKER_01Well, since it's been such a crazy week, I thought we would take it one step at a time. Again, these crazy weeks, we probably are better off doing them chronologically.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01And uh we recorded and published a podcast last Friday, so starting with Saturday, it was the White House Correspondence Dinner.
SPEAKER_04Again, boring to me. Nothing happened.
SPEAKER_01Nothing happened. No, actually, what I found interesting is it was the tenth anniversary, one zero of Stephen Colbert's amazing set the standard, iconic White House Correspondence Dinner. The the speech that totally changed the White House Correspondence Dinner from a Beltway institution to a celebrity festooned, nationally televised, you know, no one was ever going to miss what happened at this thing ever again after Colbert. At which Colbert never got a laugh or got very No, it was really the the room was not welcoming to his shtick, which but the internet was.
SPEAKER_04That was the point. He pants basically the entire Bush administration and the Washington Press Corps and the whole concept of this horrible, incestuous event in front of all of them on live television, in front of millions of people.
SPEAKER_01And so did Larry Wilmore. I mean, that's he really held up the standard uh that Stephen Colbert had set. And uh I thought the speech was great. I mean, I I don't know, uh some people panned it and said that he his timing was off and he left off some jokes and so forth. It did.
SPEAKER_04It was it was a stand-up routine, and some of it worked really well and some of it didn't, for my money. But as an act of subversive art, yeah, it succeeded admirably. And what it was trying to do, what it was trying to do was say certain things to people sitting in that room that they did not want to hear, that you will never hear anyone ever say on television.
SPEAKER_01In the beltway media. In the beltway.
SPEAKER_04Even though it's the truest things you can imagine, it's stuff we talk about on this podcast every week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and the one that keeps getting mentioned over and over again is the Morning Joe line of you know, Morning Joe is far so far up Trump's ass that he bumped, they bump into Chris Christie, which you know, nobody at Chris Matthews had to take a drink so as not to laugh.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01But nobody at that table at the MSNBC table was laughing at that.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01And uh, you know, it just goes to show you that how much power Joe Scarborough has at that network.
SPEAKER_04Well, and you and saying that it's the um uh significantly uh fewer black correspondents.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_04It's like it there's so many missing black people that it's run by Boca Haram. It's like which is a pretty ferocious thing to say. Yes, but it also happens to be true. MSNBC is in the middle of of of decapitating its network not in the middle of it, it's done. Getting rid of liberal voices and packing the house with either muzzled liberals who will go only so far and once they hit that invisible fence, go no further, or Joe Scarborough.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And I wanted to let's I I don't I don't want to jump all over the place, but since we're talking about Joe Scarborough, let's talk about what happened today this morning. Um, first of all, uh it only took four days for Joe Scarborough to have Donald Trump phone it in again. And and granted it was the morning after the Indiana primary, you would want to have the winner of that primary on your show if you could. Sure. But allowing Donald Trump to phone in interviews from his golden toilet, as I have put on Twitter. Um if you need a an image of that in your mind, you can go to my Twitter stream because I photoshopped it.
SPEAKER_04Game of Game of Thrones, baby. Game of Thrones.
SPEAKER_01Game of Golden Toilet Thrones.
SPEAKER_04Sigma Throne, calling Joe his friends Joe Scarborough going, oh, excuse me, just a second. I had to squeeze out a Christie, but I'm okay. All right. What were we talking about?
SPEAKER_01And and there's no way to honestly interview someone who's on the phone. You don't you cannot do follow-up questions well. You can't figure out what whether they're you know picking their teeth or scratching their ear while they're talking to you. It doesn't matter. And it is such a privileged thing that Scarborough and other networks have given Trump and given no one else. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And you can wind that back a couple more steps. There is no honest way for Joe Scarborough to conduct an interview with someone he's giddy about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that he depends upon for donations to his charities. Yeah. And for his ratings. Yeah, and for his ratings. And for his ratings. Let's not forget that. Uh all right. So then that this morning, uh Rob Reiner was on.
SPEAKER_04Yes, he was.
SPEAKER_01And Rob Reiner, uh I don't know why Rob Reiner was on, because I only watched the clip.
SPEAKER_04Um he has a movie coming out. Okay. And he's, you know, he's Hollywood. He's a director.
SPEAKER_01He's a director, yeah. So uh what what I think you we really have to tell the whole story because it is so Go for it, baby.
SPEAKER_04Go for it.
SPEAKER_01That Willie Geist was sitting next to Mark Helprin, first of all. Just picture that in your mind. The two of them sitting side by side, Joe and Mika are there, and here is Willie Geist and Mark Helprin, you know, consuming air. And Willie is doing the questioning and saying, you know, not everyone watches this show and takes an instruction from us how to vote. How can you explain the appeal of Donald Trump that people actually agree with him? And you know, they're not listening to us tell them how to vote.
SPEAKER_04Now, now, this is an example of how fat, slow pitches across the plate are deliberately whiffed by the typical beltway wax work centrist douchebags who are on the air. Because a question like that is the kind of one that you would get a mouthful of argle bargle about both sides from everyone else. Yep. This is also an example of how if you put any honest liberal across from any TV centrist or conservatives, they can knock it the fuck out of the park easily. This is why, again, for the most part, liberals are never allowed anywhere near Willie Geist or Mark Alperin or Joe Scarborough.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Because and resume.
SPEAKER_01Well, and the re and as you say, an honest liberal, a drift glass or a blue gown on being delivered that softball would say, Well, you know, the reason is you have uh Donald Trump talking to you from his toilet yesterday morning and last week and the week before that, and the week before that, and he is given unfiltered access to people and given the uh cachet of your show and to to spout off whatever he wants to say unquestioned. So that's why. So what Rob Reiner said in one sentence was well, there's a lot of racists in America.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, in the Republican Party.
SPEAKER_01And the pearl clutching immediately happened. You didn't really say that. And Mika actually put her hands to her cheeks. Yeah, like, oh my gosh, how can you say that? And and it was as if there was all of a sudden Bob the Builder, a hundred Bob the Builders around Rob Reiner with hammers, pushing him back into a box that says it's not all Republicans, it's not all conservatives, it's only a few, it's only the dirty few, and they're bad examples of Republicans, and they aren't our party, and both sides, both sides. And and Bernie Sanders people are racist too.
SPEAKER_04And on it and just it was the entire tool bag of right of media bullshit about let's here's a subject we're definitely not going to talk about. So let's exactly build a wall around it as fast as possible.
SPEAKER_01Fast as possible, and all of them were doing it. And I'm telling you, Rob Reiner pushed right right back and said, You do not see people with swastika tattoos at Bernie Sanders rallies. Right. There are no skinheads at Bernie Sanders rallies. Bernie Sanders rallies. And I was so proud of him because he brought Joe Scarborough into the picture.
SPEAKER_04Right. This is this is a Joe Scarborough tactic, which is let my minions bash my guest, and while I sit back and smirk, and if I need to step in, I will. But I I just, you know, I'm taking a break.
SPEAKER_01But Rob Reiner wouldn't let him do that. Rob Reiner said, You have been a politician, you have spoken before audiences, and I can well imagine that if you stood up before an audience and saw a bunch of Klansmen and skinheads and Nazis in your audience, you would say, I don't want to be represented by these people. I don't want their support. Donald Trump doesn't do that. And and that's when Joe Scarborough basically surrendered and said, he's got to move away from that. Isn't it just a little bit late for him to move away from that? He's not gonna move away from that. And that's what what Rob Reiner says. He said, he's not gonna move away from that. Why would he do that? That's who he who has brought him to power.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and also that's who Donald Trump is. Donald Trump likes that kind of thinking. He does. So yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's like Carl Paladino, you know, horseporn aficionado and and local thug and gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. You know, wrap your head around Carl Paladino, head of the Department of Homeland Security. Wrap your head around Joe Arpayo as the United States Attorney General.
SPEAKER_01Give them a fancy suit and a high-rise Manhattan office and a million-dollar base from which to grow your business, and you've got Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_04So exactly. Yeah. And these are, and there is an absolute uh symbiotic, creepy, incestuous relationship between Joe Scarborough and his television show and the needs and desires and political ambitions of Donald Trump, and always has been, right from the very beginning. It's been very clear, it's been very open. Everyone at MSNBC is smart enough, because they're all smarter than Rutabegas, to know that that's what goes on in the morning at their network. They are just obliged by contract not to talk about it, even though it's horrifying.
SPEAKER_01That's what I thought was ironic about the whole thing is I went back and just Googled at the and just searched at the MSNBC.com website for Trump racist.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Those two words. And I found an entire segment, recent segment within the past two weeks from a Chris Hayes show where he is interviewing people talking about white supremacy within Donald Trump's campaign. Then I went and looked again, and there is an entire segment where uh Lawrence O'Donnell is uh using his time, his last word moment at the end of his show to talk about how goddamn dangerous Donald Trump is because he is a front man for racism in America.
SPEAKER_02Yes, he is.
SPEAKER_01And he just went and he went full blown for four minutes, over four minutes, about how we have to stop this guy. This was in 2011. Uh-huh. Not new, not recent, not talking about Carl Paladino. This was 2011. We have to stop Donald Trump because he's a racist, a front man for American racism. Then uh I found an article on msmbc.com again talking about racism within Donald Trump's uh mindset and how he has always been uh within New York City, you know, on the white man's side, right? That that's been his MO. And I said, this is the media that Rob Reiner consumes. Right. He understands MSNBC. Exactly. He understands the media. But he made the mistake, and well, I don't think it was a mistake, I think it was conscious, but he made the quote unquote mistake of repeating what he heard at MSNBC nighttime on Morning Joe. Which you're not watching. Which you don't do. There's a wall. And you don't cut there is a wall, right? There's a 12-foot-high wall between Morning Joe and the rest of MSNBC.
SPEAKER_04Well, there's a vast wasteland in the middle of the day where it's basically a camera pointed at whatever podium Donald Trump may or may not show up at. And then in the evenings, and and let's let's give um uh Joy Reed a shout-out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. One of the smartest people on television. Which is nice.
SPEAKER_04It's absolutely great, and that's a wonderful thing, but um I'm glad of that. I also do not believe for one minute that MSNBC is not Fox Light, it's not a shithole being run by Roger Ailes Jr.
SPEAKER_02practically.
SPEAKER_04And it would, it's being run by men who would sell their own grandmothers on Eatsy in a second if they thought it would boost their ratings.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So you know, great. They fired Melissa Harris Perry. They got shit for it. Said, what do we do? What do we do? Shit, shit, shit. Gotta give gotta give a spot to somebody. Okay, Joy Reach. We'll give her a show. And they'll then they'll shut the liberals up. That that's the the object. And I and she'll I'm I assume she'll do great with it. I hope she has plenty of latitude. Uh I think she has a lot of integrity. I don't want to see fewer uh African American liberals on television, even if she has to work at a you know whorehouse like that. Um, you know, you're the piano player in the parlor, right? And you're a really good piano player, and I appreciate your music. But I'm not gonna pretend that the structure that you play in is anything other than a criminal enterprise designed to get Donald Trump elected and ratings.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So and it's really disturbing to me that I have to make that distinction between what one talented person is doing on a major television network and what the rest of that corporation is doing to my democracy. And I don't like splitting my brain that way. It hurts my little head because I'm a liberal. I can't entertain more than one thought at a time. So but but Rob Reiner did the Lord's work today.
SPEAKER_01He did.
SPEAKER_04He he beat him down. And but here's the thing the the end of the story is tomorrow Joe Scarborough will go right back to having a job for life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_04Nothing will change. Um, it will be forgotten, it'll be swallowed up by the great dumb media, it will never be spoken of again at MSNBC. Yeah, right, right. And liberals will pass it around like a dirty postcard, like we do. We'll remember, because our job is to remember these things. But it will not affect anything, and it will not change anything, and no one in the executive suites at MSNBC is gonna lose a minute's sleepover. Because you know what? It was great TV.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It was great conflict. Urrr Dinosaurs fighting, uh and tomorrow, you know, we'll do a cooking show and meet people in the middle.
SPEAKER_01Well, and everyone, every employee of the network towed the party line at that moment. So it it didn't hurt anybody. Uh let's back up again. Let's back up. We're going to pretend that the Indiana primary hasn't happened yet.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Let's all pretend put on our put on our yesterday caps.
SPEAKER_01And Ted Cruz uh as candidate had quite a little uh meltdown on election day of um I as I said on the most popular tweet I wrote all week, um we've reached that moment that we reach in every campaign where Lee Harvey Oswald is trending on Twitter.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01This was weird. And I mean, this is a weird season anyway, but this was weird. Um, Donald Trump taunting lying Ted Cruz with a story from the National Enquirer about his dad handing out pamphlets with Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. And that, you know, after an exhausting campaign and being up 14 hours a day on your feet trying to get people to vote for you in Indiana for two weeks, nonstop, seven days a week, to have someone say, and by the way, your dad hung out with the assassin of JFK. You know, that and and this is going to be taken seriously by the media because Donald Trump said it uh at that and you're you're down six points to this asshole. I mean, I I can see why Ted Cruz melted down. I can I understand it. But he scorched the earth at that moment.
SPEAKER_02He did.
SPEAKER_01And it was he's a liar, he brags about VD being his Vietnam. I mean, it went on and on for moment after moment after moment. And the thing was on Twitter and on my email blew up, and it's like, everybody turn on your TV now. It was one of those moments of we all you all have to see this live because it's real and it's going down.
SPEAKER_04Well, and and you know, um um Chamberlain story goes, Neville Chamberlain, the reason that Hitler Hitler scheduled the uh armistice talks at a place where there was no smoking is he knew Chamberlain had to have a cigarette.
SPEAKER_02Oh it drove him nuts.
SPEAKER_04He was like at finally he was like, whatever, man. Yeah you need to smoke. Donald Trump understands how deals not how deals are done in in in in terms you and I would understand, going to uh a financial advisor or going to the bank or or doing a mortgage. He understands how sort of deals are struck among dinosaurs, and he needed to put Ted Cruz down. He needed to knock him out in Indiana, and then he doesn't have to worry about anything anymore because he's out of the race. So what do you do when your opponent is exhausted and and afraid and is looking at his poll numbers and seeing he's gonna lose, probably lose big, and he's bet everything on this, and he's out there, you know, his wife is looking at him like every every step he takes is awful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Everything he does makes him look creepy and terrifying, and that he frightens children, and his wife thinks he's a a fucking weirdo. So how do you how do you put and and he's exhausted? So what do you do? You know, his dad probably was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Boom! You know? It's just out of left field. It's just some fucking lunatic punch out of left field, which a calmer, more well-rested, less desperate candidate would have shrugged off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, what do you want? Donald Trump's a liar. He lies all the time, he's lying about this. Let's talk about my trade policy. No, it he launched, and on the day of the election, if he scorched Earth a week before, maybe it makes a difference.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But he he went ballistic long after, you know, the the missiles were in the air. There's no way to, you know, the Indiana was already out voting when he went on television and started screaming and raving about all these true things about Donald Trump. And all these true things about Fox News.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, let's not forget that that part of Ted Cruz's rant was the people at Fox News, Roger Ayles and Rupert Murdoch at Fox News, have decided that Donald Trump's going to be president, and the media's against me. Well, the media's not against you. You're just a creepy, awful person. Uh, but and you deserve to lose because you're a creepy, awful person. But you're right. Fox News is in the tank for Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Because they have to be. Yeah. Because he's the fascist that they could think they can control, and you're the one they think they can't. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's as simple as that. But this is this is your party, man. Surprise, surprise.
SPEAKER_01I think I think that's the question then that becomes the theme of our show, the core of our show for the rest, which is this is your party, or is it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, because this is now, because everyone has left, Trump has left everyone in the dust. Kasich pulled out, which to me was a surprise. If you're the last man standing against Trump, why not give it a shot? But I I assume he ran out of money. Um anyway, the idea that now Trump is the only one left of the 17 people running for president. Yep. And no one saw this coming. No one saw that this was going to be that he was for real. No one in the Republican establishment or mainstream media.
SPEAKER_04Someone else had the liberal blogosphere.
SPEAKER_01Well, liberal blogosphere took him seriously. But a lot of people didn't. And I frankly, I agreed with Lawrence O'Donnell for a long time and said, you know, when he has to release his tax returns, when he has to really go up against reality in terms of who he is, and people people are going to reject that. And I underestimated how angry Republicans are. Republican based primary voters are at their party.
SPEAKER_04And how little they care about reality anymore. Right. They really don't give. Shit about the air they breathe, the water they drink, or the or whether the sun rises and sets in the east. It doesn't matter to them. The reality, they just divorced it.
SPEAKER_01Right. And and they've divorced it for two reasons, I think. One is they've been fed a diet of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Drudge for 30 years. And so reality, what's that? You know, they taste bad. Right. It's it's everyone is a rhino unless they agree one hundred percent with me.
SPEAKER_04Right. And number two, if I may, yeah. They would have to admit liberals are right.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04And they'd rather die than do that. Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So well, and I and I think too, um, the economy for the Republican base is terrible. It is. As it is for the rest of us. So you're willing to vote for anything to change that. And and really, we have to give Donald Trump credit for one thing, which is he is the only one of those 18 or 17 people running for president who stood up and said to blue-collar unemployed America, you have a right to an economic future, and I'm going to fight for that for you. Now it's bullshit. Right. He's not going to reopen the goddamn coal mines. That is just a lie. No. Any more than he's going to rebuild his bankrupt companies and hire back all of the uh hotel cleaners that got laid off when he lost his Taj Mahal casino. The economy, uh the reason those coal mines are closing is their product isn't desirable anymore. Right. And the product that can be brought to market is being done by machines. Right. So uh automation has done as much to fire coal miners as uh clean air legislation. So um and the price of coal is higher now than the price of solar, if you can believe that. Right. So there's really uh uh an economic problem that will not be solved by reopening coal mines. That's not going to happen.
SPEAKER_04There is no future in it. There literally is no future in digging coal out of the ground and burning it for fuel. Right. You can do it for a while.
SPEAKER_01It's not just because it's environmental, and that's I think you know, coal miners want to blame Obama and his clean air initiatives and so forth for their plight, because that's easy to understand, and not blame the coal mines, which are being automated and which are expensive to run. And so it it just Trump's not going to do that. And that promise was just the biggest lie of the week in my book.
SPEAKER_04But but once again, the there is a party that has worked rather hard, especially on the manufacturing sector, about which I know a great deal, to retrain workers, get them moving towards jobs that are not exportable, that will stay here. There's a gap. There is a long-standing gap in the jobs that are available and the training that's out there. It's not the there's the training gap is overrated. But Barack Obama started his candidacy in 2006, 2007, um, going to a high school that a group I'm familiar with helped open. Yeah, and it was a manufacturing manufacturing high school and said more high schools should be doing this. The Barack the Obama administration has been really consistent about worker retraining, about apportable skills, about getting people jobs in the manufacturing sector, about light manufacturing, about advanced manufacturing, and it's not gonna solve every problem. But it is a way and these are good jobs that can stay here and that can cause other jobs to be induced in the economy, and do, and it has a pretty high multiplier effect. And yet, because he has a D after his name, it is impossible for these people to vote for him.
SPEAKER_01And black skin.
SPEAKER_04Can't do it. Jade cannot fucking do it, and that is suicidal. Unfortunately, these people are just gonna age out and die one day. Yeah, and their problems will die off with them. While they are here, they are making enormous amounts of mischief because they cannot get their fucking tiny heads wrapped around the fact that the Republican Party hates them and it's been fucking them over, and it has nothing to do with their gun ownership or their Bible or anything else. Those are the things they turn to when everything else fails. But it's failing because the trickle-down regenomics that they voted for over and over and over again has screwed them. And they cannot admit it because then they become the chumps that liberals have always said they are. And again, they would rather die than do that. So they are just running that rope out to the very end, and they're gonna vote for the biggest, craziest, loudest, lionest, scam artist, probably knowing on some level that he is all of those things. Because fuck you. America let me down. Guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna pull the pin on this grenade and roll it right out in the middle and boom, blow the whole f fucking thing up. That's really why I think they're doing it. Yeah. They want to burn the system down, and who better to do it than Donald Trump?
SPEAKER_01And and I want I I hope that Hillary Clinton or whoever the nominee is, Bernie Sanders, uh, will start to talk to these people about about these coal miners in particular. Yeah. About the future and how it's gonna be hard. I mean, I think Hillary Trinton tried to do that with that one coal miner who uh confronted her.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um Barack Obama has tried to uh flow a lot of job training money into West Virginia and Kentucky.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01And Joe Manchin, who's not my favorite Democratic senator by a long shot, but he has been trying to get federal funding for job training, for conversion of jobs to green energy jobs, to bring manufacturing to that area. And guess who's blocking it? You know, you don't have to guess.
SPEAKER_04It ain't the congressional black caucus, I'll tell you that.
SPEAKER_01No, it ain't the congressional black caucus. And so uh we need a program. And I I've said to you, I know, that you know, we're gonna have to replace a lot of pipe, a lot of water pipes, not just in Flint, but all over the country. And there needs to be, you know, this makes you sound like Donald Trump, but I think he's right about this. It needs to be America first. You don't put a pipe in the ground that's paid for with federal tax dollars unless it's manufactured in the United States. And you still, even if it costs more, you'd start making these kind of rules where tax money goes to American jobs. And I think it was Chris Matthews who said, you know, if you borrow money, which right now is it for the federal government can print money and borrow money at zero percent and start rebuilding every bridge in the United States that is below code, and uh most of them are, um, there's now a huge, I read an article today, there's a huge infrastructure program in Washington in infrastructure crisis in Washington, D.C., even.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Of just crumbling buildings and crumbling pipes and and uh st street streets with pipes underneath them that are collapsing and and sinkholes, you know, on the streets of Washington, D.C. It's a real problem. Those are good jobs that can be union jobs that can bring income to people, and as Chris Matthews was pointing out, you borrow that money, you put these people to work, they pay taxes on their income, it pays for itself.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And you have something that'll last 50 years or something.
SPEAKER_01Another 50 years you've taken care of that infrastructure. And and and school let's build schools, let's rebuild the Detroit school system. Let's rebuild there's there's just so much potential to put people back to work.
SPEAKER_04And the the problem is Republicans the the minute the problem is that we have like the lead pipes that flow water under us, that work fine. As long as you don't run corroded crap down them, they they work fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um the the corroding rotting mental infrastructure of conservatives is so far gone that they don't they have no idea how their government works at all. Yeah. They know that they're they're sitting there looking at a complicated machine that doesn't produce gold ingots like it's supposed to. And their solution is to beat it with a crowbar.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And just keep clubbing it until it stops doing whatever it does. They have no fucking idea what their congressman votes on. Yeah. Or that their congressman doesn't vote, or that the Senate is not going to vote at all this year, or virtually not at all. They have no idea how budgets work. They have no idea how legislation gets passed at all, and they don't care because they're fucking morons. They have been listening to Fox News so long, all they know is there's a big government out there somewhere that's causing all of their pain, and Donald Trump is going to take a big hammer and smash it, and a bunch of golden eggs are gonna come rolling out of it, and everyone's gonna get rich.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And there are tens of millions of people who are that fucking stupid in this country, and they are incredibly dangerous to the rest of us. And they just selected their candidate for president.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Which brings us up to Tuesday.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I asked the question this week about which came first, a party that is completely unaware of their duty to govern, or candidates who have no clue about what government is. And I don't know the answer to that, whether it's the philosophy or the people that came first.
SPEAKER_04If I had to theorize, I would theorize that like nice old people who are scammed out of their money and never call the cops because it's too goddamn embarrassing to admit that they are, oh my god, I'm I'm I'm a caricature. I'm one of those people. I'm I'm one of those silly old people who gave all her money away or his money away. Republicans are simply so deeply embedded in in they're so buried under layer after layer after layer of bullshit that they can't get out of it. They're they are lost, they are addicts, and they can't get out of it without a major tectonic admission on their part that they have been wrong, that they don't know how their government works, that they have listened to liars over and over again for decades, and they don't care, that they've ignored people who've told them that putting that gun to your head and pulling the trigger is gonna is gonna hurt over and over again. And that at the end of the day, they they just want to blame liberals and smash the system.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because they're basically primates and they don't care, and they can't change. At this, they might have been able to change 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 10 years ago, but at this point they are so lost and so doomed that they can't change. And this is why Trump really is kind of a uh a horrifying miracle. Because Trump clarifies Trump is Trump is God's way of saying, you know what, liberals are right all along. It really it really does force the right to either embrace its fascism, which a lot of them are doing. Oh yeah, or or find a way to weasel out of it. And that's what this week has been about. It's been about all of the people. Ted Cruz, first of all, I have in my notes that first of all, Carly Fiorina fell off the stage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah But really, Ted Cruz fell off the stage. And he took the entire true conservative bullshit scam down with him. Because they the Republican Party had their true conservative.
SPEAKER_01They had somebody that claimed to stand for something, true conservatism.
SPEAKER_04Every single thing.
SPEAKER_01Which is freaking out about gays in your bathroom. Right, right?
SPEAKER_04Abortion, God, uh government is the s is the problem. Oh, I will repeal Obamacare, I will I will lay waste to liberalism and salt the earth where it stood.
SPEAKER_01And actually, of all the candidates, he was the true believer. He was the true believer. I really believe this shit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04God himself has called me. And and so the Republicans have been among the many, many, many, many ways they've been lying to themselves for decades, is that if only a true conservative were the candidate, then you know, then the There's still there's still people out there on Twitter hoping for that and calling everyone a rhino.
SPEAKER_01Sure. You know, either for supporting Trump or not supporting Trump. You're a rhino.
SPEAKER_04They had it, they had their true conservative, they had their perfect, true, honest to God, died in the wool. Batshit crazy.
SPEAKER_01He wants to repeal Obamacare, cut spending, cut taxes, cut everything, everyone stand on their own, bring Jesus back into the White House, be white, be for white people, be for white, straight Christian people. And yeah, he was the true believer. And this know nothing carnival barker wiped him out.
SPEAKER_04That's right. That and so the and and watching like Ross Duthat, Cardinal Ross Duthat, um watch in the New York in New York Times yesterday saying essentially the true conservatism has died. Well, I could have told you that 20 years ago. I've been telling you that for 11 years. And you haven't been listening to me. So I guess I get your column now and you get to go be a blogger somewhere. Which I think would be totally fair.
SPEAKER_01That'd be fair.
SPEAKER_04Um but this is boys and girls, moms and dads, cats and kittens. This is the moment, this little period right here, as they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, terrified of all the chickens that are coming home to roost. Now is one of those moments when we can take down the Republican Party.
SPEAKER_01There's a window open that's been opened before for a very brief moment, and I think this is going to be just as brief. Yeah, it will. But there really is a moment when there's a puncture in the Beltway bubble of, oh my God, this actually has happened and we actually have to deal with it. We can't both cider Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_04Even though they're desperately trying.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I I just finished writing a post about a guy named Elliot A. Cohen, who's a Bush, both Bush administration's defense guy, writing about how desperately he wants a third party because you know, Donald Trump, but the extremes on the left.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Because I need someplace to park my vote so I can pretend it wasn't my fault. And that's really all this third party talk is. It's it's Tea Party for rich people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's I want to place, I want to, I want my own funny hat and my own slogan so I can put my vote somewhere that doesn't back Hillary Clinton, but isn't supporting Donald Trump, so that after the election I can say, don't blame me. Wasn't my fault, I had nothing to do with it, and that's really all the Tea Party ever was. It was a big scam so that a bunch of lying Republican douchebags could pretend that they never supported Bush. Well, this is exactly the same thing. It's a they're desperate for a place to park their vote so that they won't be held responsible for the rise of Trump, even though the rise of Trump was 30 years coming, and for 29.9 of those years, they were perfectly okay with every step their party took to get them to where they are today.
SPEAKER_01And a lot of them are admitting that way too late. But there have been several essays this week about you know, I let Anne Coulter go on, and I let the birthers go on, and I did all these Mia Culpas of, you know, my party's been crazy for a while, and I've known it, I have let it happen because I wanted to win elections.
SPEAKER_04See, I read that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I read that Ben Howe.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep, that was one of them.
SPEAKER_04Except, you know, paragraph number 22 is on the one hand, I'm not gonna become one of those those insufferable right-wingers who smears everybody. On the other hand, I'm not gonna become some lefty who puts rainbow um um avatars on everything to show how progressive I am. Because both sides. Still goddamn both sides.
SPEAKER_01Because he's gotta he's gotta make sure that his resume looks okay to the Heritage Foundation. And that really is where the dividing line is for anyone that's in media or television is will I have a job in December? Yes, and regardless of what I say, and I have to angle it whatever way I'm gonna angle it, whether it's Bill Crystal saying third party, third party, although he can say whatever he wants and always have a job, obviously. There's something going on special case.
SPEAKER_04He's a well he's a he's a special case, but he's a leading indicator of the deep conspiracy um on in the in the in the media to keep certain people absolutely protected at all costs. And no one will tell no one will tell us why.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um but but but the the the smaller fish are are definitely posturing one way or another. And those who who don't have to posture, who really can can hold on to some sort of core principles, is the Bush family.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Because they got theirs. They're they've got more money than God, and they're not going to be in office anymore. So they can just say, well, we're opting out this year. And I don't I think didn't they say they weren't gonna vote?
SPEAKER_04I I don't I I don't know, but they're really quiet.
SPEAKER_01I mean, and they're not going to the convention and they're not they're they're not participating in this.
SPEAKER_04So Well, I and one of those people is David Frum.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Former Bush speechwriter who has written a marvelous article, he said laughingly, in the Atlantic, where he has a job because he knows people, um, in which he says Hillary Clinton could be a truly great president if only she takes this opportunity to build a cross-party coalition where someone like, say, David Frum could find a work, find a job. You know, a party where I could, you know, find a teat to feed off of. Yeah, right, right. And that's again, it's they're posturing for where am I gonna land once this all falls apart? Who's gonna hire me? Who's gonna keep paying my mortgage and covering my you know, hooker bills?
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04And so as as we were saying, this has happened a couple of times before in recent memory. Um, 9-11 was the first.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Not the attack, but the aftermath, which conservatives used as a get out of the 90s free card. Every single thing that they said about Bill Clinton and how presidents should be treated, and how elections should be run, and whether deficits are good or bad, they completely negated, reversed, and abdicated uh after when Bush was president. Completely. They sold every principle that they swore they believed in during the Clinton administration because the terrorists said, well, 9-11 changed everything. No, it didn't change math. You didn't change your core constitutional principles that you said to have dated back 200 years. You just don't have principles. You have convenient tactical positions that you take in order to win elections. So that was the first one. 9-11 was their get out of jail free card. Nothing counted before the before the Bush administration because 9-11 changed everything. The Tea Party was the second one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04The Tea Party was a completely made-up bullshit scam to get millions and millions of lying Republicans who who had voted for Bush twice and cheered on every disaster he created, get them off the hook for everyone.
SPEAKER_01It's another get out of jail free card every single time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And Trump is the third. Trump is the third strike. Trump is absolute final definitive proof of who they are, what they believe, and how how fucking awful these people are and have been for decades. But so my question is, what you're watching now is the the both the party elite and the donor class and the media scramble for some way of pretending that this isn't their fault, they had nothing to do with it, they were never there, they never touched them in that special place, they didn't put the thing in their drink. Yeah. Yeah, it's on video, yeah, it's on YouTube, but so the fuck what? And pretending that so they're trying to find a way out of this. But not a way to fix it, because there's no way to fix it, but a way that they're not to blame for it, and they can move right back to doing what they've been doing for years. Playing the both ciderist game, collecting a paycheck from the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, etc., and and their lives just go on as they've been going on. And this is a moment when we could actually stick a dagger right in the heart of the media if anybody knew how to get in the front door. And Rob Reiner did a very good job.
SPEAKER_01Yes, he did.
SPEAKER_04But we need about 20 more of those in public. We need Joe Scarborough shitting himself on stage in public. We've seen.
SPEAKER_01And everybody who's gotten in and and tried to do that, tried to puncture Joe Scarborough or puncture that mentality, has been fired. Right. And and it's it's really obvious that that's what's happened. So uh the the wagons do circle, and I don't know how long this window's gonna be open for people to say, look, you know, we did this. I I did love how Barack Obama handled it on Saturday night. To look at them all and go, mm-mm. You know, here we are, wondering if Cleveland's gonna blow up. Yep, and you did this. And he turns to the entire audience of beltway pundits and beltway hacks and said, and you did this.
SPEAKER_02You did it.
SPEAKER_01And uh good for him. Obama out, and he's gonna be missed.
SPEAKER_04I yeah, I'll miss him.
SPEAKER_01I'll miss him.
SPEAKER_04I'll miss him.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_04But let's let's not bury him yet, because he's still in president for another 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Well, not only that, Driftglass, but I he did announce, I mean, that was sort of the the fluff story of the week is that uh Molly Obama is getting into Harvard. She's gonna take a year off first and then go to school. And Obama announced Saturday night that he's gonna live in Washington for two years while his other daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. So uh he's not going real far away, and I think that's very interesting. You know, usually presidents leave town.
SPEAKER_04I just had a flash on uh Samuel Jackson in uh in uh pulp fiction. He's just gonna walk the earth like Kane in Kung Fu, you know, having adventures. And wouldn't that be awesome, you know?
SPEAKER_01We're gonna uh end uh the last story we want to talk about is what the headline in the local newspaper was today. Why don't you talk about that?
SPEAKER_04Uh apparently a whole bunch of state agencies are real of state funded agencies, the people that are funded by the state, are really tired of Governor Hedgefund uh destroying the local economy and the state budget uh for no reason other than he wants to get rid of unions and he's a jerk. Um they're suing him to get paid. They're suing him for a hundred million dollars to get to get to do his goddamn job.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04And they're taking him to court, and whether they succeed or not is is impossible. Important, but it's equally important that the headline in my local paper was governor getting sued by people that he's been stiffing. Billionaire governor won't pay his goddamn bills because he doesn't believe he shouldn't have to, because unions are evil.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I I think it's sad that this has had to happen. Because this is the only way anything has gotten funded in the past ten months is by court order. You have to fund it. And so uh this is how we're running our state now is by court order, period.
SPEAKER_04Our judicial system is good is our go fund me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah for the state.
SPEAKER_01And that's that's a tragedy. That's not something to celebrate. That's a real tragedy. No, but I hope the state agencies are successful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Each week we post to our Facebook page and website an internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. This week's Internet Kitty is Colette. Colette is 15 years old. She injured her front paw as a kitten, so now she holds it up in the air in a very dainty ladylike way. And uh her human tells us that in her biopic, she will be played by Maggie Smith. All right. She's lying on a gorgeous quilt, which is clearly her quilt. And uh you should go visit Colette at our Facebook page and website. You can send your internet kitty to us at our email address, proleftpodcast at gmail.com, or you can also write to both of us. Feel free to write us. We do love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or U.S. Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air, unless you say otherwise. Don't forget our gourmet coffee guideline. If you can afford to buy an espresso-based beverage for yourself, buy one for us. And don't forget our Amazon link at our website. We believe in buying local, and we also believe in shopping Amazon with our link. If your alternative is a big box store. Driftglass, we got a beautiful letter from Cynthia. We want to say hi to Cynthia.
SPEAKER_04Hey Cynthia.
SPEAKER_01Uh she wrote us this week and said, although a lifelong proud liberal, I only recently, one month ago, discovered your podcast and your blogs. What? Yeah. They are now a regular part of my internet perusing. Additionally, I now consider Friday night my treat night because I get to listen to your latest podcast.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Cynthia.
SPEAKER_01Thank you both for your thoughtful commentary and outstanding humor. I just finished ordering something off of Amazon, which I clicked through on your podcast site. I wish I could do more, but I am a full-time grad student working two minimum wage jobs. Oh my goodness, Cynthia, we we love you.
SPEAKER_04Love you, Cynthia.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I don't have much income left after I pay bills. However, I do order health supplies and food products and textbooks from Amazon on a regular basis, and we'll do so now only through the link on your site. Once again, thank you sincerely, Cynthia. Um Cynthia should know, and everybody should know, that in addition to getting a little credit every time you buy something through our link, the more you order, even if it's a small item, um, we we are compensated. The percentage goes up the number of items that get sold through that link. So if we have a hundred items sold, we get, I think it's six point five percent. And then every hundred hundred items after that, um, they add a per a half a percent to the overall uh take that we would get. Does that make any sense?
SPEAKER_04It does. So even if it's just a little bit of weed, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even if you're just ordering your that one hit of weed pounds, that might that might bump us up into a higher uh percentage gained for the month over, you know, which would be a big chunk of change if we ever got up to seven or eight percent. Which is nice. I think there's a top limit, but we've never tried to figure out what that is because we've never reached that.
SPEAKER_04We also want to remind all of the the servicemen and women who who we hear from and all of our minimum wage people, and all the people who are just struggling out there. If you can't afford to kick in, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04This is our our gift to you, our present to you.
SPEAKER_01That's what we're doing. We're here to we're here to uh share and be a part of a family, and uh we hope that we are feeding you something with it's always been the purpose of this podcast to give people hope and to give people a vocabulary to talk about these issues. So and that's we we don't if we were doing this for the money, honey, yeah, we would have quit 200 episodes to go.
SPEAKER_04I'd be working for Red State, you know, Barack Obama probably caused Donald Trump, and here's why.
SPEAKER_01Actually, it's kind of sad that Red State has become a real good anti-Trump blog in the past three days.
SPEAKER_04Well, inevitable. This is also inevitable, really. This is all just like of course, this is like V for V for venture.
SPEAKER_01It is V for V.
SPEAKER_04Domino's falling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just get out of their way. If you have to step, this is this is a crazy time of year, and feelings are very high and tempers are very high, and people's skins are very thin. Just step back, relax.
SPEAKER_01One of my colleagues and I r agreed that as far as Facebook is excuse me, as far as Twitter is concerned, we're just gonna be posting cat pictures for the next 82 days. The Democratic National Convention is over in 81 days. So like that's the closing ceremony. It's over. And something will be one person will be a nominee. Yes, and the other person will shake hands with that person and say, Oh yeah, no, we're not gonna have Donald Trump as president. No, screw that. We can't have neither one of them are going to say, my way or the highway. Yeah. No.
SPEAKER_04And now is not the time if you are on, if you're watching a candidate soar or sink, or you're disappointed, or now is not the time to rub anyone's face in anything, or gloat, or be angry, or make any demands that someone drop out.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's just not necessary.
SPEAKER_04And uh gracious in victory. Yeah, and and and uh I'm sorry, humble in victory and gracious in defeat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, and and whatever happens is gonna happen. And I really think um keep your eye on eighty-one days from now, everyone's gonna be on the same side. They really, really are. And the the people that choose to remain grumpy uh will not be part of that conversation. We won't have time for it.
SPEAKER_04So they're grumpy, you know, there's always that that residual of grumpy people. Yeah. Star. There's our and they're it certainly was in 2008.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it was bitter. Yeah. Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_04In every organization I've ever been a part of, there's always that percentage who cannot who can't find it in their hearts to give or take. Uh and that's just human nature. That that's you know, that's everywhere. So be kind to each other and be a little expansive. And if you can't, you know, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Just listen to the Professional Left Podcast, it will say it for you.
SPEAKER_01And approximately one percent of our listeners support this podcast with a contribution. You can too. See our website, professionaleft.blogspot.com for details. Both our PayPal and postal address information is there at professionaleft.blogspot.com. Did I say GoPostal Unions? GoPostal Unions. And please rate our show on iTunes or Stitcher Radio, and thank you for doing that. We are also on Google Play. Driftglass. Hey Driftglass, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?
SPEAKER_04The Internet Kitties will be skipping the GOP convention this year.
SPEAKER_03Copyright 2016, Gift Glass Week Hell Podcast.
SPEAKER_00Now it's time for Science Fiction University with our science fiction expert Gift Glass.
SPEAKER_01Science Fiction University, we are reading your stories based on the pictures that we posted to our Facebook page and Twitter stream. If you are interested in following our podcast on Twitter to get notifications of new shows and other news, whatever that might be, stuff. At ProLeft Podcast is where you follow. If you want to follow us individually for lots of other Twitter goodness, I am at Blue Gal, all one word. And Driftglass.
SPEAKER_04I am at Mr. MR underscore electrico.
SPEAKER_01And that's because Driftglass was taken.
SPEAKER_04Yes. And I believe in property rights. And I don't believe in ripping people off. So there's a drift glass out there. It ain't me. Um please don't bother them. They're very nice people and they don't swear nearly as much as I do.
SPEAKER_01So and uh yeah, we both have pretty active Twitter streams, so we would love to have you follow us. And we I tend, do you tend to follow back Driftglass?
SPEAKER_04Uh sporadically. Yeah. And it it there's no rhyme or reason. I mean, my Twitter stream is now just a fire hose.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And so I can't keep track of anything. So following more people doesn't do them or me.
SPEAKER_01Oh everybody, everybody's that way. Yeah. You get once you reach that critical mass. But generally speaking, it I go and anyone who retweets me or follows me, I go and check them out. And if they're they say I'm a Democrat or I'm a liberal or I'm politically active or I'm a gay rights activist or I'm whatever. If it looks like you're in our tribe, I go ahead and follow back just about everybody.
SPEAKER_04So And with me, it really is if I'm having a bad day or I'm not paying attention or I'm just typing. This is this is a writer's secret.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04My lovely wife often asks me uh if I've read this or seen that or read this article or tapped into that particular stream. My answer is always no. I'm type, I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm when I'm writing, that's literally all I'm doing. I'm tunnel vision focused on that one thing for maybe three hours, maybe two hours.
SPEAKER_01So that's and and that's his O C D as opposed to my ADD. So I'm all over the place while I'm I can't do it any other way.
SPEAKER_04I just can't. I write impressionistically sometimes. Yeah. A dab here and a dab there, but I really cannot um compose any other way than that. And that means lots of things just whiz right past my head.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's fine. Or they wait two hours and then you go look at them again. And then by that time, there's 7,000 new tweets that you haven't read and aren't going to, so unless you need to go look that up.
SPEAKER_04So that's and that's when the kids show up going, did you see what happened on the Instagrams today? What's the Instagram?
SPEAKER_01What's a Instagram? Exactly.
SPEAKER_04So it's a it's a lively uh writerly home we have here.
SPEAKER_01It is, it is. All right.
SPEAKER_04Speaking of which, let's get on with our uh project.
SPEAKER_01Writerly stuff, yes. We have two submissions. I'm gonna read the first one. All right. Both of these stories today are about the picture of the man at the machine of some sort with uh it's it's key punch operator tape uh whipping around his head, and there are musical notes and key punch tape in a very 50s style computer uh going around him, and it he's kind of in a musical trance of some sort. So that's that's the picture, and both of the writers today have used that picture as an element in their story. All right, and we're gonna start with David's, and David writes, Hugo Celento had one important skill. Of all the abilities in the universe, his was the most important, most powerful. More important than harnessing sons for power, more powerful than the most heavily beweaponed battle fleet, more vital than tissue regeneration and immortality. His power was words. More than that, his power was meaning. He alone could understand all of the languages of all of the species in the universe. And it was all possible through the machine. Words would pass effortlessly from mouths to his ears, to his fingers, on the specially designed keyboard, where he could translate them into the written form onto punch sheets, four languages simultaneously. And these translations were not rough approximations of meaning, they were exact meanings down to the tiniest nuance. Through this he allowed the species of the universe to communicate clearly with one another, every shaded word, idiom, and slang, despite the many differences between species in culture and temperament, such that never could a misunderstanding lead to interstellar or even worse intergalactic war. So trusted was his family at this sacred task that no one ever questioned his translations, as they were always true, always providing clear understanding, as they had been for generations, ever since his ancestors first built the machine over ten millennia before. Which was why as he translated away on a routine trade negotiation between the Sirlac Federation of the Gondora cluster and their former enemies in the Yabara spirals, it never occurred to either party that they were about to be tricked into a short march to a conflict which could very well spell the end of the pangalactic civilization. As Hugo began to type the first of his deliberate mistranslations that would lead to war, he mused to himself quietly, a grim smile cracking his face. This will teach them to make fun of my music. Ahaha, he's become a villain. Uh recall?
SPEAKER_04Well, I I I certainly uh uh there's not much in the way of color.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04But the names are pretty clear.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I actually liked that the the names were phonetically spelled out uh pretty much so that when I read this for the first time silently, it didn't interrupt my flow. Right. And that's that's a conscious decision a writer can make. I I liked how he did that, because you really did just sort of read the words gondora is spelled G-H-O-N-D-O-R-R-A. You know how to pronounce that. It doesn't have weird symbols in it. It's not uh trying to put too many vowels together at the same time. And uh yeah, that was that was well done.
SPEAKER_04Um And there's a sense of scale.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04You know, this is intergalactic. Multiple galaxies are involved. That's hundreds of billions of stars times hundreds of billions.
SPEAKER_01I also like how he took the time to explain what was what the beauty of the translation was, that it didn't just translate the words, it translated idiom and it translated meaning and uh little nuances in language. That that is a very specific um talent that this machine has that could be uh you know com completely necessary in a in a pan-galactic world. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And um there so I like the story. Let me be very clear. This is a story I I could easily have seen uh uh in uh uh astounding magazine or magazine fifties, sixties, it's it's right in the wheelhouse, it's absolutely science fiction.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04There are questions an editor will have if you're going to pursue this and suggestions. For example, if it's his family, and they are certainly royalty at this point, uh they are the most important family in the in in the nine galaxies or whatever it is. You might want to make him Hugo Celento the 17th or something like that. Be very clear that it's a long line of of um this sacred thing that's been passed down from generation to generation. Even though you say it, that adds a little bit more of a time scale to it. But there's also the the question of okay, how come no one's replicated this machine? And isn't it likely that civilizations that rub up against each other for for millennia will learn each other's language, sort of?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Um and the particularly if they're doing trade. I mean, if they're involved in trade, they're gonna have more than one translator. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And there's a certain level at which there's a uh there was a Harlan Ellison story, I forget what it's called at this point, about this guy who figures out that the way to put a stop to intergalactic war is by staging a series of small uh he builds a computer that explains to him you have to have a whole series of small wars that sort of interlock with each other, that produce this larger galactic unity. So he has a plan for deliberately starting a little war here, a little war there, and kidnapping that person and killing that person and blowing up that planet that all make will make sense in the end. And I'd be interested to find out if this guy is going to subtly screw with the galaxies, or if he's gonna blow it all up at once. Um but that's you know, that's for four paragraphs, you know, that's exactly where you should be. That's I really want to know what what what's his deal? Clearly, someone doesn't like his music. Um I wouldn't want to piss this guy off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And uh uh but there's um there's a question about the utility of a single machine and a single family that does all of this work. Maybe it's just really critical communications.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say maybe it's uh he's the official translator for the pan-galactic, whatever, you know, united pan-galactic, whatever, so that he's he is very important and very high up, uh, but he doesn't translate everything from everyone because you're gonna you have to kind of have a limit to that. And I I mean he would still be translating four languages at once, you know, and and be able to do that. Yeah. He's like I I'll visit that's a real quibble. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I envision sort of Mycroft Holmes, you know, the unofficial most important person in the British government.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04As a go-between and a negotiator, um, as a translator. And but this is a wonderful start to a story. It's absolutely pure science fiction. Keep up the good work.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Uh, and you have raised questions in the reader's mind they would like you to answer, and that's your job. So good job.
SPEAKER_01Good job. All right. So our next story is by Arlus Bunny, uh, who has written to us in the past and uh has a is a fellow podcaster.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh and you're gonna be on their show, is that right, Drift?
SPEAKER_04I am. I'm gonna be on uh Hopping Mad with Will McLeod, I believe that's the correct pronunciation, and Arlus Bunny. And I believe they tape sometime in the next day or two. And uh the show's on the 14th of um May, I believe.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04I'm pretty sure. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure how that works. And it should be exciting. They have a a fine podcast, and they have invited me to join in the fun of kicking around some pundits and some ideas, and I'm delighted to do so.
SPEAKER_01And they write a they do a lot of podcasting about economics.
SPEAKER_04They do.
SPEAKER_01Both have backgrounds in economics. So um they are their podcast is also on Netroots Radio, like ours is. So with with Justice Putnam. So um you can check it out there at Netroots Radio, or you can check it out at I'm HoppingMad.com. And uh, we are not promoting their show because Arlis Bunny submitted a story. No. We're promoting their show because Drip Wass is gonna be on their show next week.
SPEAKER_04So and having listened to them talk about economics uh on a couple of podcasts, I I am punching way out of my weight class. So know that going in.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's fine. All right, so you're gonna read uh Godell Bethy Bach.
SPEAKER_04I am. All right, which is uh, I believe a play on Godell Escherbach, which was a very fine book from the late 70s or early eighties, which talks about math and science and music. So guess which picture this was based on?
SPEAKER_01Same one, yeah.
SPEAKER_04The last thing she saw before the time slipped yanked her through its maw. That's how she thought of its breath, wet, sharp pull, was that poster from the nineteen fifties, which was hanging safely framed at behind glass in pride of place above her office desk. The poster depicted what she had always known. The music of the universe was the code of the universe. The results from her recent experiment had revealed to all those with the appropriate security clearances that she was complete competently leading her research team ever closer to a Rosetta Stone moment of decoding the mystery. The answer seemed so close these days, it was almost right there in her paws. There was always a soft, lip smacking pop when Bethy emerged on the other side of the slip, and it invariably worried her. Frankly, as the trillionth generation descendant of a prey animal, she was naturally just a bit concerned about everything. The thought of attracting unnecessary attention made her twitchy. It isn't like they didn't have rabbits when Johann Sebastian Bach was alive. It's just that rabbits had been unlikely to be attending concerts and quite likely to be attending dinner as the main course. Humans hadn't really progressed much since then Bethy thought. They had done well for a few hundred thousand years, and then their progress had sort of run down. Rabbits, who could breed a new generation every twenty nine days, had kept their own counsel and jumped right on over humans in the evolutionary race for greater intelligence. In the intervening years rabbits had either done for themselves or caused to be done things now considered. considered to be the quote greatest accomplishments of mankind, unquote. Rabbits had taken on immense scientific challenges and resolved them with a focus and persistence one rarely saw outside of the lagomorph and rodent communities. Global warming, check food production, check infectious diseases, check overpopulation, check. Bethy spared a moment to think of the heroes of the early days who had given their lives in the laboratories of humans in order to learn and communicate information back to the warren. She thought about the kind of bravery it had taken to do those jobs, and her heart broke just a little, and for the hundredth time. Quickly coming back to the present, well, the present of the past, she wrinkled her nose at the smell of unwashed human feet, and stood in the dark of that long ago concert hall. Bethy promised herself that when she got home that night she would take a hop down to the meadow and leave a bouquet of dandelions at the base of the long black marble wall of the heroes memorial. Maybe she would even sign the book this time. Signing was always difficult for her. She didn't like other bunnies to see her cry. Bethy had worked hard to gain the respect of the Warren. Even if they thought she was soft, if there was any hint that she was fluffy, she would never get them to sign off on the next part of her research grant and for Bethy, the research was everything. She knew she just knew that her research would be the next big leap forward.
SPEAKER_01Very good.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, recall. Uh I love the um the long marble wall that the Arles handles very well the time travel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That you know the present of the past and how she has to be here now in the era of Johann Sebastian Bach and not focus on all the people that died since the point at which she is at because she's got to focus on whatever her mission is to to go back. And we don't know that from this four paragraphs but uh we do know that she has to stay in whatever moment she's in. Uh Bethy uh is a scientist and uh I think I I think there is a voice here that's very um uh what's the word I'm looking for? Distinctive authentic authentic yeah I think I think it's a really authentic voice. Uh you do you do feel as though this is being narrated I mean it's being narrated by a third person but it's also her voice is in there and it's intelligent and logically thinking and processing what's happening and uh you trust this narrator yeah uh right away. Uh and that that is something that writers do unconsciously but if you don't do it you notice right away that you haven't done it. So uh I like the voice of this.
SPEAKER_04Um it doesn't get bogged down on the technology either no gadget it's just right there's a thing it happened and here we are. And here we are we have conscious intelligent self-aware rabbits who have take pretty much taken over the earth um and there we don't need to explain how that happened or you know exactly there's a a lovely um I think uh uh at least a tip of the hat to that old cartoon about the lab rat who says he's training the scientists yes yes every time I ring a bell he brings me cheese and and clearly the the rabbits have been intelligent for a long time yeah and just never let on.
SPEAKER_01Let on yeah yeah uh I would like to see just a little bit although I guess you're going to get into this later Arles um and and maybe it's just that I want to know more but that decoding the mystery and how that relates to music you you say that in the first paragraph and then it's gone completely. And um and that's okay because you're explaining why a rabbit is doing all of this.
SPEAKER_04But yeah I want to know what's what's the mystery and how does it relate to music that's well and she's the the the narrator which I assume is a she I don't know but Bethy sounds a little she's she saw um is going back to visit Johann Sebastian Bach at some really critical moment in history to learn something really important about music and the universe. I also like uh the smell of unwashed human feet. Yeah because it it you dropped it in there at at the exact moment when you needed some a a little bit of a vivid pop of oh we're we're we're back on the dirty cobblestones. Yeah yeah and uh and you did and it that that was just enough and the dark concert hall was just enough to let me know that you have radically changed location which you're telling me but that makes me smell it and see it as well.
SPEAKER_01So good job uh I think there's a comedic opportunity here too when you consider how many children Bach had. Yeah that he was the rabbit of his day. Yeah so there's that uh but good going good going and and look forward to reading the rest of this uh Arles actually sent us more of the chapter uh that we didn't get a chance to get into but um I'll look forward to checking that out and hope you go further with it. That is very very good.
SPEAKER_04And embedded in the title I mean the original book is Gdel Escherbach. Yeah and it's about um the eternal golden braid. It's it's about logical systems and musical systems and um the system of art of Escher that sort of uh exceeds its own limits. It it creates a a geometry or a music or an art that actually transcends its medium. And there's a relationship between those three that's mysterious and beautiful. So good title good everything uh you're moving the right direction I don't see any obvious you know gross um context errors or spelling errors or anything like that that made took me out of the story so just keep doing what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01Very good well thank you Driftglass my pleasure we'll read two more maybe we can find two that about the other what I call the fish picture.
SPEAKER_04Yeah the fish pick.
SPEAKER_01The fish pick uh next week on Science Fiction University.